Over The Rhine

Ohio  

Track Listings
 1 B.P.D. (4:33) 
2 What I'll Remember Most (4:28) 
3 Show Me (4:22) 
4 Jesus in New Orleans (5:48) 
5 Ohio (5:13) 
6 Suitcase (3:26) 
7 Anything at All (3:36) 
8 Professional Daydreamer (4:33) 
9 Lifelong Fling (5:48) 
10 Changes Come (5:33) 
11 Long Lost Brother (4:43) 
12 She (4:32) 
13 Nobody Number One (4:16) 
14 Cruel and Pretty (4:17) 
15 Remind Us (3:05) 
16 How Long Have You Been Stoned (3:40) 
17 When You Say Love (2:45) 
18 Fool (4:04) 
19 Hometown Boy (3:57) 
20 Brothered (7:07) 
21 (Untitled Track) (*) (3:41) 

Discography
The Long Surrender (2011)
 The Trumpet Child (2007)
 Snow Angels (2006)
Drunkard's Prayer (2005)
Ohio (2003)
The Cutting Room Floor (2002)
Films for Radio (2001)
Amateur Shortwave Radio (2000)
Besides (1997)
The Darkest Night of the Year (1996)
 Good Dog, Bad Dog (1996/2000)
Eve (1994)
Patience (1992)
'Til We Have Faces (1991)


 

Release Date: (2003)
Label: Great Speckled Dog
Producer:


December  Hotel 
Overall Rating:  ++++

(She)
Album Reviews

Kiss 'Cult-Band' Status Goodbye; or, They've Made Their Tusk and It's Perfect

Let me get this straight right from the start: I have never heard any of Over the Rhine's records before this one, I have never seen them live, all I know about them is from their website and the info sheets sent out by the label and this record, Ohio. So it's not some OtR-cult follower talking, just me, a critic on PopMatters with no agenda whatsoever, when I say that this is perhaps my favorite record of the year so far.

Simply put, this is the one where Over the Rhine goes for it all. The band, which consists essentially of married songwriters Karin Bergquist (also the singer) and Linford Detweiler, has been around the art-pop and alt.country scenes for more than a decade without ever really breaking out into mass consciousness. I can't even remember reading any reviews of their records -- that might just be my faulty memory, or it might be their unmemorable band name -- it comes from Over-the-Rhine, the artsy/dangerous neighborhood of Cincinnati where they lived when they first started out. How the hell is anyone supposed to remember that name? (It's also handy for haters; this critic I know says that his wife calls them "Over the Rated." Har har, it is to laugh.)

Then again, their cult status might be due to the fact that they've played almost entirely to their cult. Two compilations of uncollected songs for a group that's never been anywhere near any charts? Thoughtful online tour diaries and literature recommendations on their website? Clearly, this is a band that is comfortable with their underground status. The easiest thing for them to do, obviously, would be to just play out the clock -- keep pumping out the same sort of stuff that they've always done, make their tiny little audience happy enough, leave the boundaries unpushed, etc.

And maybe they've done that here, I don't know -- I've never heard their other stuff, and I'm not part of the cult. But that would make their other records even more impressive than this one, and I don't really think that could possibly be the case. Ohio doesn't sound like a group on cruise control. First off, it's a double album. Sure, they could easily have left a couple of tracks off and kept it at a long single disc, but they made a decision not to do that, to just record all the new songs they loved and see how they fit together. [Full disclosure: I love double albums, if they're done right. Anyone who thinks they're prima facie pretentious is just afraid of commitment.] And there is only one song here that could be credibly and easily left off (Disc Two's "She"), which still wouldn't cut it down under 80 minutes, so I'm glad they left it in, because I love it more every time I hear it.

Secondly, this record is nakedly emotional in a way that a cruise-control indie band could never be. I put this on for the first time not knowing what to expect, and heard the simple piano chords of "B.P.D." on Disc One for all of six seconds before being introduced to the singing of Karin Bergquist: "You're making a mess / Something I can't fix / This time you're all alone / I'd make it alright / But I wouldn't get it right / I'm leavin' it alone". This voice, equal parts country- and rock-loving small-town Ohio girl and neo-boho jazz-torch sophisticate, is just a damned juggernaut through all my critical defenses -- Bergquist is as powerful and damaged a singer as Allison Moorer, which is high enough praise for anyone, I think. There should be awards for the way Bergquist flips the script from the resigned "crying out loud, crying out loud" into the bleak "crying out" in this song, and the way she makes the wordless chanted chorus work for her is uncanny like an X-Man. And "B.P.D."'s status as the year's best power ballad is cemented right near the end, when a huge crashing metal guitar riff explodes the gentle sad mood into a full-on arena-rock sing-along. A lot of lighters are gonna burn out over this one.

It's tempting to dwell on this hypnotic voice, and I will do so myself in a while, but let's cut Detweiler into this a bit. Judging from writing credits for their other records, it seems that he's always been the main songwriter of the group, main bandleader, spokesman, guiding light, etc. But here just about all the songs are written by both of them together, and it sounds that way; Bergquist may be the singer, but she's not the only thing happening in Over the Rhine. Disc Two has a number of great form-meets-function moments. The extreme self-flagellation of "Long Lost Brother" would be unbearable were it not for the laid-back funk of the drumbeat and Tony Paoletta's slide guitar work, so when Bergquist's voice cracks as she is wailing "I wanna do better! / I wanna try harder! / I wanna believe / Down to the letter" it doesn't sound affected or silly or anything except real, lovely, true, and other unfashionable abstract nouns. "How Long Have You Been Stoned" weds '70s stoner rock to a Macy Gray sort of psychedelic murk, and Detweiler's Procol Harum organ line on "Fool" turns the song from an arpeggiated 3/4 lope into a brand-new country classic that will sadly never be covered by anyone from Nashville.

These songs, as you might imagine on a double album by an uncategorizable band, are all over the place in tone and instrumentation: the mournful Rickie Lee Jones-ish (Magazine-era) piano ballad of the title track has little in common with either the song that comes right before, the fakey-tonk "Jesus in New Orleans" ("The last time I saw Jesus / I was drinking bloody marys / In the South"), or the one that follows, the album's most audacious and telling piece, the beautiful "Suitcase". This song is deceptive with a capital D; at first, it's a sweet heartrending slow-burner about the end of a relationship: "Whatcha doin' with a suitcase? / Tryin'a hit the ground running?" But then you start noticing that its circular unresolved chord structure sounds kind of familiar, where is that from, where have you heard that before, and then Bergquist sings "Funny but I feel like I'm fallin' / I wanna beg you to stay", and you see how that echoes the line from that Stevie Nicks song on Tusk, and it all hits you: "Suitcase" is "Beautiful Child, Part 2"! The younger guy is tired of her now, and is leaving her, and she's devastated but she sees the fatalistic humor in it all, and it's doubly sad and somehow less sad for it . . .

… and then you realize why Ohio had to be a double album, that Over the Rhine has gone and made their Tusk, every mood and every genre they could think of had to go into the stew, they're charting everything that they ever felt, throwing in every riff and style they've ever heard, incorporating soul and country and hip-hop ("Nobody Number One" is straight-up talking-blues rap, yo) and whatever it is that Tom Waits and Mary J. Blige do in their songs, "fallin' for the entire human race". (That's from "Jesus in New Orleans", just one of the songs that Detweiler calls "Christ-haunted" in the liner notes; they aren't proselytizing, they aren't denying anything, it's all good, don't worry -- Bergquist calls Jesus "still my favorite loser".)

But I could talk and justify and quote all night, and never get to the bone-dry truth that "Professional Daydreamer" is the prettiest song I think I've ever heard, so incredibly sad and brave and Janet-Gaynor-smiling-through-her-tears lovely that I'm welling up now just thinking about it, or to fully explain just what it is about Karin Bergquist's voice that makes "Lifelong Fling" so sexy, or how Detweiler manages to incorporate two of the best lines of the year ("This is what I remember most about dying" and "You were 80% angel, 10% demon, the rest is hard to define") in the same song. Ultimately, this homegrown Tusk cannot be quantified, can only be experienced first-hand. Preferably with headphones, preferably with a bottle of pretty-good wine, preferably with a box of Kleenex nearby.  This is a great achievement by a band that has just slammed the door on "cult status" forever.

~Matt Cibula

    

The double album - for many it’s the crowning moment (or is intended to be) of an artist’s career, one great encapsulating moment that summarizes, extends, and perfects everything that the artist has done in his or her career. Next to the concept album, it’s probably the project that comes loaded with the most potential for collapse, holding as much possibility for exposing its creator as being blinded by his or her own grandiosity in lieu of enough ideas to fill up two discs of music.

There’s nothing worse than a double album dud, a work of pretentious and excessive personal expression that fails to justify its length or price. As far as I can tell, Bob Dylan was the first artist in the rock canon to decide that his work was too expansive to fit on only two sides of molded wax, with his 1966 release of Blonde on Blonde setting the bar unconscionably high for those who would follow. Before long, though, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Clash, and just about all who saw themselves as prolific and profound used and abused the format. In fact, the format is steeped in so much lore that Wilco made 1996’s Being There one song over the length of a single disc just so they could mark “double-album” off on their checklist of things to do as rock stars. And even though it’s a dying breed at this point in rock’s singlecentric focus, at its best, the double-album can still become an artist’s defining statement. Even though they’ve been around quite awhile and have been notably prolific over the course of nine albums, Over the Rhine never seemed the types to have a double-album in them, if only because they were too humble to think themselves capable of it. Ohio proves, if they did believe that, they were wrong.

Having held to a fairly consistent standard as the prototypical under-the-radar Americana band, the husband-and-wife duo of Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler has accumulated an almost unimaginably rabid fan base, leaving a trail of perplexing soulful heartland pop and post-modern Christianity. Evocative songwriting, rich textures, and Bergquist’s soothingly vulnerable croon, however exceptional, still never seemed to add up to a 21-song, 90 minute release, but in such cases the results justify the means, and this release more than justifies itself.

Opening with a McCartney-esque piano ballad, with a perfectly sighing, string-laded bridge, the album is impeccably balanced into its two constituent halves, the first taking on a distinctively ruminative feel that allows the duo to display their increasingly polished chops as Americana-pop arrangers. Immediately, their deftness with delicate, yet earthy, balladry is evident, humbly layering piano, guitars, pedal steel, violin, and dobro to create lazily swelling arrangements, and Bergquist’s disinterestedly sultry voice never sounding more achingly soulful in delivering loaded confessions of faith and loss.

“First time I saw Jesus, I was drinking Bloody Mary’s in the South,” Bergquist slurs on “Jesus in New Orleans,” using the line as a springboard for a swaying sing-along chorus that chides human nature’s tendency to rub out their best and brightest. As such, the disc largely finds its protagonists looking out at the world with regret and doubt, turning such feelings inward in wondering if they, themselves, aren’t part of the problem. The second disc, despite indulging in a few less starkly introspective arrangements such as the snaking psychedelic guitar groove of “How Long Have You Been Stoned” and the roller rink organ and Caribbean slide step of “When You Say Love,” largely continues in the dejectedly resigned, yet cautiously hopeful, ethic of the first half. More gorgeous open space is produced, with Bergquist’s vocals locking in step with solitary piano notes in the reprimand of “Remind Us,” counterbalanced with the show-stoppingly classy “Fool,” a song predestined to be covered by the next generation of soul balladeers.

Those who have claimed that this release is a bit difficult, claiming that it incorporates a higher proportion of sonic mood pieces and heavy-handed confessions, are missing the point. Further, the album boasts hooks and choruses as accessible and memorable as anything in Over the Rhine’s extensive catalogue, with the rich electric guitar and rainbow arc chorus of the gratuitously head-bobbing “Show Me” and the sweeping pedal steel of “Long Lost Brother” carrying melodies as irresistible as anything on Americana radio.

What’s completely astounding is how Bergquist and Detweiler skirt the edges of so many potential songwriting perils and sonic clichés and never succumb to any of them. Christ-haunted songs about sin and redemption? Yep. Introspective and self-referential themes that reach back to a childhood lost? Uh-huh. A rousing gospel-flavored soul ballad calling for peace and love as a bonus track? You bet. And it’s all essential and first-rate material, breathing with authenticity and personality, despite the fact that the songs are so simple and straightforward that their nuances will be missed without careful listening. Ultimately, if they can be blamed for calling plays out of the classic rock and roll rulebook, at least they’re smart enough to do it with so much distinction and vigor that few could ever claim to do more with the rudiments of the form.

In the end, Ohio is the rare double album that manages to hold up under the weight of its conceptual arc, which is even more impressive when considering the profoundly introspective and exploratory nature of this record. This far into their career, one in which they could have been more than excused for simply coasting on the good graces earned through years of exhaustive touring and recording, few could have predicted that Over the Rhine had an album this epic, this far-reaching in their future. All in all, it’s the best record they’ve ever made, the best double album in recent memory, and quite possibly the best Americana album released this year.

~Matt Fink

 

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